


A Little Death

by lalalyds2



Series: Every Day A Little Death [2]
Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, First Times, Hilda's past, Sibling Incest, and present, doesn't get explicit till the end chapters though, yadda yadda going to hell in a jolly handbag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalyds2/pseuds/lalalyds2
Summary: Do you love your lungs?In a way, yes and no.They are vital to your existence.  You do not notice till they are absent.Hilda breathes through Zelda.Silly to think she could ever live without her.





	1. youth is not innocent

**Author's Note:**

> this is a companion piece to La Petite Mort. You shouldn't be too confused (hopefully) without the reading the first part, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

At six, Hilda already knows three universal truths — magic exists, her family is the whole world, and Zelda is the best part of it.

Zelda says that last bit frequently.

Big sisters are Satan’s blessing.

So far, Hilda believes it to be true.

Her sister is nearly a half foot taller than her, pretty, and invulnerable. Her power is strong, though undeveloped. When she magics the pictures Hilda draws into dancing off the paper, Hilda cannot stop laughing and feeling a bit gooey on the inside.

There’s nothing better than big sisters. She loves Zelda with every inch of her being.

And no one loves her more than Zelda.

 

~*~

 

She’s cupping a twinkling sun in her fingers, tall grass tickling her nose, when she feels it.

Zelda’s frowning.

She turns, can’t even see her sister, lets instinct take her to where her sister is lying on the ground, glaring up at the sky.

“The stars are laughing at me.”

Hilda, still clutching her treasure to her chest, wiggles down next to her.

She cranes her neck, peering up at the offending heavens. They are dusky blue, the grass fronds framing the open air like skinny fingers, but seemingly innocent.

“The stars aren’t out yet, Zelds.”

“Exactly. It’s like everything in the world is determined to keep me waiting.”

Hilda doesn’t understand, shrugs it off. Whatever Zelda’s waiting for can’t possibly fall from the sky.

They are safe, cocooned in thatch and youth, and it’s only them.

It’s perfect.

Time to show Zelda her captured magic.

“Here’s a twinkling star then, just for you.”

Zelda peers at it for a long, hard second.

A huff.

“That’s a lightning bug.”

“A  _firefly_.”

“Same thing. And neither is a star, you little liar.”

She hasn’t learned not to cry yet.

A deep sigh.

“Give it here, you little goose.”

A tch.

“You’ve smushed it.”

She gasps, but before she can examine the bug for herself, Zelda squishes it expertly between her thumb and forefinger.

“Zelds!”

“It would have died anyway. At least I made it quicker.”

She whimpers. The sky is suddenly oppressive, crushing her in remorse, like a bug between fingers.

Another sigh from Zelda. Her big sister grabs her wrist, turning the hand palm up, pressing the remnant goop in the center. Then, she taps Hilda’s fingers into a fist, flips it over and kisses a whisper into the smooth expanse on the back.

Wonderingly, Hilda opens her hand.

A whiter glow emanates from her palm, ethereal and wispy.

“And  _that_ , is how you give someone a star.” Comes Zelda’s self-satisfied remark. 

It _is_ rather pretty.

“I wish that poor little thing hadn’t died though.”

Zelda drops her wrist at that.

“Don’t be a baby. There’s a price to magic, everybody knows that.”

It’s the first time she’s ever wondered if magic is worth it.

 

~*~

 

She’s fourteen and a half when she dies for the first time.

Rebirth hurts more than slaughter. The torn muscles knitting themselves back together, wounds spitting out dirt before closing up again. Perhaps most disconcerting is the mud under the fingernails. It’s more disconcerting than her body’s stiffness, waking right before rigor mortis set in.

Dirt under the fingernails should not be so life affirming when it comes from death.

It’s strange, and wrong.

What’s worse is the knowledge she deserves it.

Zelda had been different, after her Dark Baptism. Excitement had been replaced by a hunger Hilda couldn’t identify.

She’d abandoned Hilda for a room of her own and abandoned everything else too.

Mother had said she needed space. The one thing the sisters had never needed before.

But Hilda still needed Zelda.

Zelda had forgotten a silk slip in their—in Hilda’s—room. Overcome by loneliness and missing her, Hilda had put it on.

It smelled like her, rich and heady and fresh like persimmons.

Boldness came over her like a fog, and she’d stole into Zelda’s room and into her bed.

She’d just wanted one last hug. One more embrace, before she could say goodbye to who her sister used to be and hello to whoever she’d be now.

She should have known.

Zelda had not appreciated it.

And thus, her spitting gravel from her heaving mouth.

The awful sensation of returning is enough to burst forth hatred for anyone.

But Zelda is waiting, and crying, and apologetic, and there’s dirt between the wet streaks on her face.

It takes less than a moment for Hilda to forgive her.

But the world has shifted.

Something in her sister has changed, in her too, and Zelda just doesn’t feel the same anymore.

It’s Hilda’s fault, because her sister used to be perfect. Must still be, so the problem lies on her uncovered shoulders.

It’s the silk. She shouldn’t have borrowed.

That had to be it.

Maybe?

The morning is strange, and she can’t stop picking from under her nails. She’d scrubbed them all night, they’d gone raw and pink, but finally clean.

She still sees glimpses of death under them, even in the daylight.

In the parlor, she paints them a bright orange.

For most, the color would look garish. For her, it makes her look citrus kissed.

At some point, Zelda had wandered in and watched, morose and fascinated, as the little brush went down the tips of her fingers.

For once she is shy, but she offers to paint Zelda’s too.

An olive branch, of sorts.

She knows how Zelda loves lilac tones, says it’s like wearing a spa on her hands.

Instead, Zelda requests black.

She paints the lacquer on without comment, and it’s not until she’s alone in her too-big bedroom that she cries in big, syrupy hiccups.

She’s lost her sister, and she doesn’t know how to get her back.

She’s not sure Zelda even wants to.

 

~*~

 

She will never get used to dying, to dirt under the fingernails.

But she does find some sort of rhythm to it.

Death has a learning curve.

She’s still young and stubborn enough to test the limits of her sister’s patience.

She knows she’s pushed too far when she digs her way back out of the earth.

But sometimes... sometimes she’s done nothing wrong at all.

Sometimes, when she’s happy or bored or simply existing, she’ll notice Zelda has been watching her like a hawk. When she notices, Zelda picks at her and goads her into a fight, and it ends as it always does.

Another painful beginning.

It’s about this time she starts resenting her sister.

There’s guilt felt over that, to be sure, but she has very good reasons for it.

It’s terrifying, not knowing when murders turned from behavioral training into sport.

When did she start mattering so little to her sister?

 

~*~

 

“It’s nearly time for your Dark Baptism, sister. Have you chosen a familiar yet?”

She’s startled when Zelda plops down next to her, so close their hips are nearly touching.

They haven’t been this near each other in weeks.

Zelda’s shoving a photo album in her lap though, distracting her from her slight panic at their proximity.

“Oh,” she flusters. “Well, I hadn’t thought about it much yet.”

She blushes under Zelda’s disapproval.

“You’re turning sixteen in three days. Pick something.  _Now_.”

“I don’t even know if I like any of the standard familiars though, or if they’ll like me.”

“That hardly matters.”

She chews her lip. Zelda sighs.

“What about a goose?”

“They honk.”

“Rabbit?”

“Too stuffy.”

“Salamander.”

“And boil it on accident? No thanks.”

Zelda breathes out hard through her nose and stands up. Hilda cringes.

“Fine! Get a  _spider_  for all I care then.”

She storms out, muttering under her breath about ungrateful sisters, but Hilda pays it little attention for once.

A spider.

It settles in her mind like a new bed sheet on a freshly turned mattress.

Yes, she’d quite like a spider.

Known to be a tad clingy, but ever so useful.

She can relate.

When it’s time for her to call on a familiar, they come in droves, all answering, all wanting to be hers.

She’s never experienced such attention like this before.

Zelda snips at her to choose one.

For once, her father interjects on her behalf.

Most witches are answered by a singular familiar at a time, two if they are extremely lucky.

Hilda must have something extra special.

He’s even in a good enough mood to wink at her.

Based on Zelda’s glower on the back of her head, she’d be dead twice over if it wasn’t so close to her Baptism.

 

~*~

 

“Were you nervous?”

It’s her last night of being fifteen.

In a fit of sisterly obligation, Zelda had followed Hilda’s request and is sleeping in her room.

There’s nearly a foot of distance between them, though the bed is tiny.

Hilda would have preferred a snuggling, but she’ll take what she can get.

“Not even a little.”

Her sister’s face is soft, for once. Unpinched.

It’s the closest she’s been to Hilda in a long time, in a lot of different ways, and something in Hilda’s chest is thumping quite strangely.

“Are you?”

“As the bloody dickens.”

Zelda’s eyes are wide, lips parted, and they both glimmer across from Hilda at her swearing.

But Zelda’s laughing, then looking up at the ceiling.

“Still such a ninny. Everything will be fine.”

Hilda’s less than comforted. She rolls up onto one elbow.

“Zelds, I’ve been thinking... I won’t fit into our coven, I’m not...what if I just—“

“Just what? Surely you aren’t thinking of going covenless. That’s simply  _disgraceful_.”

“Of course not, but there are other covens out there.”

Zelda looks at her then, and there’s something dark and pleading in her.

It both scares Hilda and gives her a weird shiver down her spine.

“You wouldn’t dare leave me like that.”

She says it like a command, but the glimmer in her eyes has turned to shining droplets on her longer than life eyelashes.

In an instant, Hilda melts.

“No. Of course not. I’d never leave you.”

In the end, her sister knows best.

Besides, there’s nowhere else for her to go.

 


	2. a harrowing education

She’d thought things would be different, once she’d signed her name in the Book of the Beast. That something would have changed.

She finds it is not so.

If things have changed, it is for the worse.

Her sister, so far away even when at home, is somehow more distant now that they’re sharing a school.

Zelda is constantly surrounded by a posse of stunningly blonde girls (though she thinks Zelda is still the prettiest), and it’s clear she is the queen.

In Hilda’s mind-eye, that image fits Zelda to the T.

Still, her hackles rise in warning.

And rightfully too, because she’s not even slept a wink before her harrowing begins.

She’s not allowed more than her cotton nightie to ward off the cold of the tower, and even her spiders’ whispers do nothing to drown out the screeches of the damned witches before her.

Zelda seems almost proud of her the next morning, till she catches sight of her familiars.

They are nearly squished as they’re wrestled away from Hilda’s shaky grip.

She thinks of lightning bugs in a field and quickly lets them go.

 

~*~

 

During her days, she studies remedies, herbology, witching mythology, and how to stay out of Zelda’s way.

Her nights, however, are much worse.

Because Zelda, and Zelda’s nasty friends, find her anyway.

 

~*~

 

She’s shivering one night, even before they lead her to the big tree.

Zelda is tugging her along, soft hands so strong on their grip of Hilda.

She hasn’t cried yet, but she desperately wants to.

She’s so tired, and Zelda won’t even look at her.

She never looks at Hilda anymore.

They stop with a jerk; the girls pull at Hilda’s robe while she looks up at those ominous branches.

She nearly wishes she were swinging from them.

Not really.

She knows what it is to die.

Wishing for it is just a self-fulfilling prophecy that disappoints her every time.

Mildred, ever zealous to prove herself, starts tugging at Hilda’s nightgown, determined to humiliate her further, or perhaps kill her through hypothermia.

“Don’t touch her!”

Zelda’s barked order surprises them all. Hilda included.

“But... Zelda,” Mildred tries, hands already under the skirt, hands warm on Hilda’s quivering thighs. “It would be so funny.”

“I said.  _Don’t. Touch. Her._ ”

It comes out a deadly hiss.

The hands drop instantly.

Then Zelda returns to herself, and sniffs.

“Besides, Hilda with clothes off is just as boring as Hilda with clothes on.”

The words cut deeper than they have any right to.

And then she is left there, to stare at bark and echoing leaves, and listen to the sounds of her loved ones dying all around her.

She does not turn around.

Until one voice, above the others, whispers in her ear.

“Hilda, I’m here.”

It sounds exactly like Zelda, even feels like her warm breath on Hilda’s ear.

“I love you dearly, little sister.”

A tear escapes, for the first time since her harrowing began.

“You don’t. You’re not her. And even if you were, she doesn’t.”

“I love you more than you know.”

She holds fast and does not turn around.

Hands ghost over her goosebumped skin, so tender, so kind.

She weeps in earnest.

This cruel lie could convince her it’s truth for simply one reason: she wants it to be.

“If this is how you’re going to behave, then I’m leaving. And I won’t ever come back.”

“Wait, Zelds, I—“

She turns.

In the morning, they find her body.

It is far too cold.

 

~*~

 

She gasps to life, inhales dirt. Passes out the minute she’s free.

She comes to in her bed. Zelda’s watching by the door.

She’s leaning against the edge of the frame, as if nothing had happened, but her hands give her away. They twist in her skirts.

Hilda is only slightly mollified.

“Sister.”

“So, you  _are_  alive. I was beginning to wonder.”

“You mean worry?”

“No.”

A beat _._

A moment of decision, then her tall sister is by her side, fingers gentle as they fix Hilda’s flattened hair. Cold on her flushed cheeks. 

“We won’t be trying that again, Hilda.”

“Wasn’t my idea in the first place.”

Zelda crosses her arms. Hilda sinks further under the covers.

“Is it over, at least?”

She looks down, suddenly fascinated by the toe of her shoes.

Hilda sighs. She’d known this respite was too good to last.

Zelda leaves without another word.

It seems absence will always be her signature.

Hilda is always left empty in her self-removal.

The desire for revenge strikes Hilda fast and hard, a shock of red in her brain.

She’ll be the one leaving Zelda in the lurch, someday.

She’ll have the freedom to disappear, the power to hurt.

She’s bluffing to herself. 

She wouldn’t know what to do with those things anyway.

But retribution is still a siren’s call. 

Plans of it play in her mind, she falls into slumber, and she dreams.

 

~*~

 

Rolling bodies in the mist, losing their shape the minute Hilda turns to look at them.

A bed, in the densest part of the fog.

Sheets are a crisp white, she follows the design of the quilt until her eye catches on it.

A high-heeled foot.

Legs. Going on for days.

Garter belt a dark blue, twinkling like the night sky, undulating with sinful darkness.

The creamy white stomach, the hollow dip of the navel.

Breasts, divine.

Graceful neck, swanning up to sharp jawlines, a bleeding red mouth. Fluttering eyelashes.

Hair, the flames she’s had memorized in her heart since she was six.

 _Hilda_.

Zelda’s voice is smokier than the cigarette dangling from her lips.

 _Won’t you take your pleasure from me_?

She wakes up wet between the legs, chanting her sister’s name as if in delirium.

There’s no big revelation, no gasp at the impropriety, no shame of the perversity.

She keeps her legs open and waits for the pulse to fade.

She is not surprised. She is not unaffected.

This is not the first time she’s dreamt it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter elaborates on Hilda's "dalliances" ... im excite


	3. touchless touching

When she returns to the academy, things do get better.

A little.

The harrowing continues, an insignificant tugging at her sanity, but the ever-present loom of death recedes.

Zelda’s gotten into different exploits now.

“A hellcat, to be sure,” a warlock describes his encounters with Zelda to his friends, completely unaware Hilda is also in the library.

The section is reserved for advanced witches and warlocks only.

Hilda visits frequently.

It’s a sanctuary of words—only books and gossip able to inflict stings.

“Look at the scratch marks!”

Strips his shirt, eight long lines of pleasure along the backs of his shoulder blades. Bruises on his throat. A faint lipstick stain matching Zelda’s favorite shade right on the lowest dip of his spinal cord.

Hilda’s invisible scoff is covered by the other boys’ hoots and whistles.

Of course Zelda had left marks. She did so love damaging her favorite things.

She leaves the boys to enjoy their ugly tales and pretty marks, feeling a little queasy.

It’s only when Zelda starts trimming her nails short and the other witches start blushing in whispers, that Hilda truly fumes.

She’s always been a little in love with her sister, being in lust with her too seems a cruel addition to the pile of things that make her a terrible witch.

How unfair the universe is, proving to Hilda repeatedly how available Zelda is to everyone except her.

Every notch on her bedpost is a notch against Hilda.

Zelda is fuckable. Hilda is not.

Zelda is scratches and euphoric sex. Hilda is virginal, prudish.

(Only a rumor, one she’s sure Zelda’s spread herself, yet annoyingly true. No one touches her, not in passing or anger or happiness. Zelda’s invisible punishment for a crime Hilda hasn’t yet committed.)

She won’t approach her though, knows better than that.

With effort, she diverts her attention from her sister, something she has not often been able to do.

Mildred stares at her, sometimes, across the food hall. Her looks of hunger do not come from her stomach grumbling.

And suddenly, Hilda knows how to exact her revenge.

It’s been a long time coming.

 

~*~

 

They kiss in the stacks, so deep in the recesses of the library there’s no danger of being discovered. A rustle of skirts the only sound in the morgue-like halls.

Their trysts are a secret Hilda carries around like armor, and her smiles are pointy.

The best revenge is finding happiness even in the midst of it being ripped away.

But Zelda doesn’t know, so she can’t take it.

She isn’t even suspicious.

Little victories.

Mildred is a biter, and impatient.

Hilda won’t let her touch anywhere under her clothes.

She gnashes her teeth but complies anyway.

Because above all, as most talented and devout witches are, Mildred is inherently selfish.

As long as her pleasures are fulfilled, she leaves Hilda alone to find her own release.

Hilda prefers it that way.

It’s not cheating, she’s decided, if nothing actually penetrates her center.

_Even if someone did_ , she thinks ruefully,  _it wouldn’t be cheating anyway_.

But Mildred is wonderfully sinful. Always eager to reach her utmost pleasure, she teaches Hilda how to twist her finger just so, to make the cunt chase the hand that feeds it.

The first time Hilda hears that, she blushes violently. Mildred laughs.

It’s not a kind sound.

But it is good practice.

When Hilda manages to get through Mildred’s description of her latest fucking without even so much as a blush, she’s rewarded with a knee thrust between her skirts and two fingers in her mouth.

It’s rough and she’s a little scared she’s going to choke, but the bites on her neck beat with the pulse of her throbbing desire, which sort of makes up for it.

“I’d be fucking you with these fingers,” Mildred groans, “if it weren’t for your sister’s determination in keeping you pure.”

Hilda stops cold.

Mildred stops too, but slowly. And only after she’s pushed off.

“I have to go.”

There’s a noise of protest, but it’s already behind her.

Hilda fixes her hair, wipes smudged lipstick off on the back of her hand, determined to find Zelda.

She has a lot of words to share with her sister.

 

~*~

 

They die in her mouth once she reaches Zelda’s dormitory.

Zelda’s in garters (and garters  _only_ ), spread out on her bed.

She is far more beautiful, far more terrible than any of Hilda’s dreams.

But the writhing bodies that always fall away in Hilda’s fantasies (waking or otherwise), do not do so now.

They are flesh and elbows and opened legs.

Boys grunting like animals, mounting as though this bed is their kingdom and throne, hands fisting hair, tightly closed and pulling for more.

They are not gentle.

The girls’ folds on display are clenching and contracting as they roll across bodies. The parting slits are vibrant and red and weeping, like the gills of a fish out of water.

Only it is Hilda gasping for air.

This is savagery, not sex.

Her shocked sounds should have been swallowed in the moans of others, but strawberry curls pop up anyhow.

Of course.

She’s been traumatized by embarrassment. How could Zelda  _not_  have noticed?

“Sister.”

She’s untangling herself from limbs, nearly falling off the bed in haste. Hilda takes two steps back.

“Who invited you?”

Accusation, not a question.

She shakes her head weakly.

“No one, I didn’t know it was happening. I just... wanted to talk to you?”

It came out in a squeak.

It was supposed to be angry.

Leave it to Zelda to continually render her fury to nothing.

“About what?”

No.

She can’t talk to Zelda like  _this_.

Not when Zelda’s hair is uncoiffed and her bra is gone, and her eyes are hooded and dark.

She’d been throbbing since Mildred, been clenching her legs as they’d craved a plundering. These visuals aren’t helping any.

She’s painfully aroused and angry, she can’t smell anything but Zelda and sex, and now she very desperately wants to go to bed.

Or scream at the universe for being such a raging, teasing, bitching  _bitch_.

Or both.

“Never mind. I’ll just be leaving then.”

She tries a hasty getaway, but Zelda grabs her wrist first.

Her hand is gentle, and wet with another’s slick.

When Hilda gasps, mouth wide, she drops her as if burned.

Zelda winces, bites her lower lip as if a secret is slipping out, and nods her head back to the heap of tumbling bodies.

She makes a gesture both generous and wild.

“You don’t have to. You could... stay.”

It sends Hilda reeling.

An intensely uncomfortable beat.

Zelda looks nowhere as awkward as she feels.

As if letting Hilda join her orgy is as ordinary as sisters having tea.

She almost looks... eager.

But that’s impossible. It’s just Hilda’s shocked stupid brain creating fantasy so she can handle all this.

If she truly  _is_  eager, then it’s a trick, and Hilda won’t give her that satisfaction.

Not tonight.

But then, she blushes.

It is distinctly pretty, an oxymoron of innocence.

Hilda goes weak at the knees.

“I’d better go. As...  _nice_  as the offer is, I think you’ve got it covered, so to speak. No need for a new, unwanted member.”

She’sout the door before Zelda can even think to protest.

 

~*~

 

She stops seeing Mildred.

Mildred does not care.

She starts seeing Calliope, someone outside of Zelda’s inner circle.

She can’t look at Zelda’s friends without blushing.

Calliope likes to pinch and have her ruddy blonde hair yanked.

Under her tutelage, Hilda learns spanking is not just for naughty children.

One day, Calliope holds her wrist in class, and her touch is soft.

Sweet, even.

She does not see Calliope after that.

 

~*~

 

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Zelda is leaning against the bedroom doorway, appearing from nowhere, as she seems apt to do.

Hilda shrugs, folding Zelda’s laundry for her, settling dresses within a trunk suitcase.

Zelda’s soon to be graduating. As a gift, their parents are sending Zelda across Europe, then to the sights in Moscow, even to the bustling ports on the Yangtze River.

Zelda’s been buzzing with excitement all month.

Hilda packs even slower and quietly feels very bad.

Her parents are sending Zelda on far away adventures.

She can only see it as they are sending Zelda far away from her.

One would think that would bring her some form of relief.

It doesn’t.

School torments may end, but the internal ones will only get worse with distance.

She is pulled from her thoughts as Zelda drops onto the bed in front of her, idly playing with the pearls Mother had set out for her.

It’s seemingly innocent, but Hilda remembers a different scene of Zelda spread out like this.

Her breathing quickens. She hopes Zelda won’t notice.

Of course she does.

“Tell me, are you getting jealous, sister?” Zelda’s eyelashes are fluttering.

She is playful and light, the softest Hilda’s seen her in a long, long while.

The gentleness keeps catching in her throat.

“Of course not.” She coughs.

Zelda snorts, indelicate and teasing.

“You need to get better at lying, little goose.”

But Hilda is already a marvelous liar.

She lies to herself every day, and especially when Zelda calls her that dumb, endearing nickname.

She lies about not wanting to jump her sister’s bones, lick the line of her throat, and beg her to stay.

That truth is dark and scary, so it remains hidden.

“Are you going to miss me?”

Zelda already knows her answer.

She’ll let honesty slide, just this once.

“Desperately.”

Zelda preens. Hilda rolls her eyes, and it earns her a jab in the ribs.

She jabs back.

A chaos of tickling and wrestling and sisterly insults ensues.

It’s not until she’s on the floor (they’d fallen in the skirmish), head turned to Zelda, yearning mixing with their bubbling connection, that she feels it.

_I’m going to miss you too_.

“You’re going to miss me?”

She’s suddenly breathless.

Zelda looks confused.

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything.”

“But I heard you... or maybe felt you?”

Zelda freezes next to her. The frown bodes trouble.

“You read my mind?”

The sudden quiet is unnerving.

She’s lost safe ground.

“I—I don’t know.”

She’s stammering now.

“I’ve never been able to do that before. I don’t know why it’s happening now.”

It’s not a skill that could be taught, simply done. Zelda has tried and cannot.

If only Hilda’d had the ability for a vision of the future. She would have seen those were the wrong things to say.

“You’ve tried to read my thoughts before?”

She miscalculates again.

“Well, it’s not like you’re very forthcoming.”

Her following death is not a surprise.

She is not alive enough to hear Zelda’s mournful, “This ruins everything.”

She would not have understood the full meaning anyway.

She never does.

But she does not need to be told not to do this again.

Zelda does not tell her goodbye before she leaves.

 

~*~

 

The rest of her days at the academy go by quieter—slower.

She does not take on another lover till she’s graduated and living in England.

Even then, they are always little dalliances in the night, nothing more.

They are always quick and always rough.

Hilda still learns a lot each time and keeps her clothes on.

She chokes on ravishing hands and cigar smoke and comes alone in her apartment as she remembers a different scent of tobacco and perfume.

She stays away from men and gentle caresses, each dangerous in their own right.

They are not what she wants.

What she truly wants is currently off in Beijing, who never writes back a single reply to the letters she always seems to be sending.

She won’t stoop so low as to visit her.

Instead, she chases her sister’s image in the blonde, English women she meets.

She never takes, only gives and gives plenty.

She finds there is a sweet sort of revenge in never being touched.

Turns out you can make lovers very happy, yet still be withholding.

She feels like a miser, clinging onto bitter memories of fading tenderness, never allowing the real thing to occur.

She’s still holding out for an impossible miracle. A pipe dream, really.

The paralysis of longing starts to loosen over years, she’s got a real and proper girlfriend now who kisses her with only a hint of a bite, when she receives the call.

Her parents are gone.

She sells her apartment, promises her lover she’ll come back in a few weeks.

Zelda is back home too. Lovely and smooth around sharp curves as she holds Hilda close.

As if Hilda is dear.

She shouldn’t be so taken with it, distance makes Zelda’s heart grow fonder.

The sweetness never lasts.

But one night, she makes tea for Zelda and they sit on the couch together, shoulders brushing when they reach for a cookie.

Zelda angles her hips, her knees very nearly touching Hilda’s. She looks her in the eyes and tells her she’s staying in Greendale for a while.

The fire crackles on as her world goes hazy. Zelda reaches out, fingernails still so short and dark blue, tucks a curl behind Hilda’s ear.

She quietly asks when Hilda’s going to return to England.  

It's subtle way out, she could go free.  

She does not return to England.

She moves into her sister’s room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just wanted to let you know my next chapter might take a little bit longer.  
> today was my birthday, so i haven't been doing any writing.  
> happy new year everybody!


	4. the years, wandering on

She does not need to learn how to live with Zelda again.

It’s as if the years never passed at all.

Zelda doesn’t ask about her time in the UK.

Hilda knows how Zelda sang in St. Petersburg, how she sat on the bronze horse and kissed the horseman on his metallic lips.

Zelda brags her embrace sparked life into him for a second, and that people will talk about it for centuries to come.

Hilda secretly thinks it’s true. Zelda’s always belonged in some sort of myth.

She kind of wishes it had been like one of those Greek ones though. Those stories knew the virtue of consequence.

Hilda also knows of Zelda’s stint with the river pirates in China. That she’d learned to conquer barriers and banking ships and backgammon.

Their parlor walls are covered in swords and silk tassels.

The furniture’s been replaced to fit Zelda’s more extravagant tastes.

Hilda is quite proud she got to pick the blankets and pillows.

Who said beauty always had to be uncomfortable?

Their bedroom is carefully neutral.

The beds are too tall for Hilda’s short legs. She must quite literally hop into bed.

Zelda’s done it on purpose, the quirk of her mouth gives her away.

She doesn’t really care to complain, so long as she’s allowed her garden and domain in the kitchen.

Zelda laughs at her housewifery, but after a bite of her vegetable pie, she comes as close to a compliment as she’s able.

“Domesticity suits you, sister.”

Hilda beams, pleased as punch.

It’s pathetic, really. How much she blooms under the slightest hint of affection.

It only works when it’s Zelda’s.

“The crust is too chewy.” Is Hilda’s thanks.

It seems when Zelda is positive, Hilda must be opposite. It’s usually vice versa.

This is how they move, like attracted, repelling magnets.

“The crust is fine.”

“I should have added onions.”

“It’s fine, little goose.”

A thrill. She does so love that nickname.

“Now hush, I’m trying to read.”

The corner of Zelda’s newspaper dips onto her plate. Hilda shuffles it away, takes the rest of the dishes too, starts soaping up the sink.

She snorts, hands deep in the water, reflecting on their state of existence.

“We sound like an old married couple, don’t we Zelds?” She calls from over her shoulder.

Zelda’s paper folds down slightly.

“Watch who you call old. You don’t even moisturize. Besides, I don’t intend on marrying.”

The paper goes back up.

Her last sentence is what’s truly news.

“You don’t want to get married?” She’s genuinely curious.

Zelda’s hum is noncommittal. Hilda sighs.

“Well,  _I’d_  make an exceptional wife.”

She’s not sure what’s causing her to be so chatty. She knows Zelda prefers the quiet.

“Except for the simple fact you’ve never courted anyone.”

Apparently, Zelda needs conversation as well. Staying consistent to character, it’s by needling at her.

“It’s a hypothetical, Zelda.”

“If you need hypotheticals to stimulate your senses, you need to reconsider your reality.”

Hilda’s senses are stimulated by getting hot under the collar.

She coughs.

Resolves not to say anything until her cheeks drain of this silly blood.

The silence bores Zelda.

“Fine,” she concedes with an eye roll. “I’ll entertain your ridiculous notions.”

She appraises Hilda, in her apron, in her blush.

“In some respects, I  _suppose_ , yes. You’d make a good kept woman.”

That made two compliments in one day. One dinner.

Hilda is flabbergasted.

Zelda averts her gaze.

“Now, don’t you have dishes to finish?”

She returns to reading, Hilda to the sink.

She’s grinning the entire time she scrubs the plates shiny.

She’d make a good kept woman.

Wouldn’t Zelda be surprised to know she already is one?

 

~*~

 

The peace doesn’t last. She hadn’t expected it to.

They’re still sisters, still jab at each other, still die.

Hilda doesn’t care to relearn what reawakening feels like, how Abel’s dirt feels unearthly under her fingernails, dislikes Zelda’s refresher course.

It happens less than in their childhood. She’s not as docile as to feel grateful for that.

Zelda’s kept busy doing mortuary work, burning off her excess energy by performing burial rites or the occasional autopsy.

Hilda manages the paper work and the people still living, still left behind.

At night, once they’ve retired to bed and try sleep on for size like a new hat, Hilda often considers their parallel roles in the universe.

Zelda, midwife and mortician, only involved with constant beginnings and constant endings.

Hilda, midwife and resident resurectee, only with the constant restarts and in-betweens.

It fits them like nothing else.

The universe has a penchant for keeping them within those lines.

 

~*~

 

Sharing a bedroom is... strange.

Strange in that it’s not strange at all.

Waking at night, wildly looking around as her heart flutters with lingering visions of isolation, eyes catching on Zelda’s form in repose.

Her body sings from it. Relaxes.

This is how they are made to be.

Together.

She is still so familiar with the need to touch her.

She quells it every time.

Sometimes, when she wakes from uneasy dreaming, she’ll turn, and even in slumber she is not alone. Zelda’s brow will be pinched, lips murmuring inaudibly.

It’s on these nights Hilda won’t resist the urge to crawl out of bed. She’s not stupid enough to try full blown comfort, but she will reach out, touch her little pinkie to Zelda’s.

Her face relaxes, and she sighs  _Hilda_  in her sleep. Unaware, every time, but always peaceful in the coming mornings.

They don’t touch much more than that.

Hilda will take it.

 

~*~

 

They are arguing about memorial flowers when Edward comes home to them, brings them a stony-faced Ambrose.

Edward leaves after an hour, back to high priestly duties, leaves Ambrose.

He is distrustful, unwilling to talk lest something condemning slips out, staring warily as Hilda natters on about welcoming him.

It takes only two months for him to become wrapped around her finger.

He is clever, and beautiful, and so kind—she wants to wrap him up in motherly affection and hug him tight.

Zelda says that’s called smothering.

She does it anyway.

Five years pass in blinks of flashing life. The art Zelda collects. The kitchen cabinets overflowing with Hilda’s baking utensils. The records Ambrose plays over and over again.

He is a good bridge between the women. Close enough to soothe their bruised prides after little spats, distant enough to see reason between the cracks of insanity that are the Spellman sisters.

He knows how touch starved they are.

Settles the need a little with a ghosting hand on Zelda’s shoulder, twirling Hilda around the kitchen to the crooning phonograph.

It’s moments like these—Ambrose reclining at the table, catching the ripe strawberries that Hilda throws with his mouth, Zelda scoffing at their antics but secretly grinning behind The New York Times—that keep him content.

Makes him feel a little less trapped.

“But you know what I really miss, Aunties?” He comments around a strawberry, red pulp and seeds spurting from his white and gleaming teeth.

“What’s that, dear?” Hilda asks, wiping her hands on a towel.

Zelda gives no indication of acknowledgement.

“Dating.  _Physical. Contact_. Fu—“

Zelda coughs before he can finish the word.

He laughs.

So she  _was_  paying attention.

“But you understand what I’m getting at, yeah?I miss the chase, the pursuit of being romanced.”

“Oh, that’s lovely—“

“Hilda can’t relate, nephew.” Zelda interrupts again, rolls her eyes as Hilda has a little fume.

“Really?” Ambrose leans forward, elbows on the table.

His surprise melts Hilda’s heart.

“I, uh, can’t say that I can, luv.” Her glare at Zelda goes ignored.

“The charms of men have been lost on me.”

“Understatement of the century.” Is muttered under Zelda’s breath.

A strawberry is lobbed at her.

She doesn’t even have the decency to flinch.

“Perhaps you just haven’t noticed,” Ambrose still tries, the dear.

“After all, people don’t tend to tell such an enchantress,” he winks, “just how much she  _bewitches_ them.”

Hilda giggles.

“Oh, you  _are_  a charmer.”

He catches the way the cigarette-ringed hand clenches on the newspaper.

Interesting.

“Or perhaps they’re too exhausted to say anything, because you’ve been running through their dreams all night.”

The hands grip tighter. The sports section is practically glowering at him.

He decides to push his luck even further.

“I mean, I’d ask Satan to bless you, but,” he gestures to her lovely curves. “It looks like he already has.”

A real and slightly terrifying growl comes from the now mangled paper.

“But truly, Auntie, you are one hot—“

He is smacked,  _hard_ , on the arm.

“Ambrose, that is your aunt you are speaking to.”

“Oh, calm down, Zelds.”

Hilda’s voice is soothing, but he sees mirth behind her eyes.

“He’s just having a bit of fun.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He doesn’t really understand the threat, but it doesn’t matter because Zelda pushes up out of her chair, grabs Hilda on the wrist and leads her out of the kitchen.

“Come, sister, we have  _real_  work to do besides sitting here, spitting inanity.”

Hilda grins at Ambrose as she’s tugged away, Zelda unable to damper her good mood.

“Once we’re done downstairs, Ambrose dear, I’ll lend you one of my penny dreadfuls. Romance galore. And  _very_  saucy.”

Her voice fades as she describes her latest paperback to Zelda, about a certain captain smith and a kidnapped damsel and a shipwreck so it’s only them on a deserted island and, get this, the captain’s  _lost his shirt_ , and...

He shakes his head at his disappearing aunties.

Right and proper fools, to love and be loved with such ignorance.

He does grab Hilda’s book, just to stick it on Zelda’s bed.

He would have enjoyed it, to know when Zelda is handing it back to Hilda, their hands linger.

 

~*~

 

Zelda does not like Hilda’s cheap thrill novels, though she never admits the true reason why.

Hilda gasps and gets very breathy during particularly raunchy bits of her stories and it sends pleasure shocks right through her system.

Hilda does not admit the true reason she gasps.

It is not because of the lewd actions of whatever hero or heroine she’s currently living vicariously through. She could read their torturous lovemaking without even batting an eyelash.

No, it is their confessions of love that cause such sighs.

It’s pornography of the romantic catharsis, and she is an avid voyeur.

Their words are so gentle. Sun-soaked with dappled affection, they whisper things Hilda desperately wants to believe in.

Love, in reciprocity.

She doesn’t think it exists, but that’s what fiction is for.

 

~*~

 

Years wander on.

They keep losing things.

They lose their brother to an infidel, a mortal.

Then they lose them both.

Hilda is seized with the knowledge of witches’ mortality.

Like Edward, she could die at any moment, where magic dirt cannot bring her back.

She is terrified to die knowing she has not lived the way she should have. She’s too scared to try and get it.

She does not know how to pursue that life, pursue reciprocal love, without leaving Zelda.

The very thought cripples.

She can’t die without being loved.

She cannot live without Zelda.

She understands Ambrose better.

She is trapped by her own unwillingness to choose happiness over her sister.

 

~*~

 

She does love Sabrina though, is loved back too.

The tiny poppet brings her leaves (taken from her own solarium, but she can’t hold it against her), and pretty rocks she finds in the forest.

Sabrina hugs her with all the might of a lion cub.

Her heart swells every time she sees the sprite asleep and held tight against Zelda’s breast.

It stirs something sharp in her chest, maternal fierceness for the sleeping child, something distinctly  _not-maternal_  for her sister.

Sometimes, she forgets Sabrina is not hers and Zelda’s.

But then she will squeak in delight at the sight of her aunties, kiss their cheeks before bed, and she absolutely  _knows_  she is.

Sabrina is theirs.

Even the stubborn teenager who questions the Dark Lord at every turn is theirs.

She is vibrantly Zelda in conflict, is Hilda in affection, is someone entirely her own.

Hilda won’t ever leave her.

She wishes she could think the same of Zelda.

Since Edward’s accident, her sister’s fist of control has tightened.

She isn’t soft towards Hilda at all anymore.

It makes things easier, and yet far more terrible.

She’s being pushed away again. It hurts worse with every time.

But unlike the last abandonment, now it’s Hilda’s turn to leave.

Leaving before she gets left. 

She can only move as far away as Zelda’s old bedroom. It’s as much as her heart lets her.

She’d been planning on moving out of the house entirely, but Zelda had stolen a  _baby_.

Had beamed at her and promised her a forever.  _And_  ever.

She’d spent two whole centuries longing for that very thing.

She’d dashed it all to pieces within seconds.

Speechless, frozen, utterly aghast.

Heartbroken. 

Zelda had looked heartbroken.

It’s nowhere near as satisfying as Hilda had thought it would be.

But she still throws Zelda’s words from so long ago back in her face, because she’s stupid and drunk on kissing her first man and just plain lizard-brained in desire for her sister to feel what it’s like to be her.

 _I think it’s time I had a room of my own_.

And this time, it’ll be different, because it’ll be Hilda’s own room, not just the room she stayed in because Zelda was gone.

This time, Zelda stays.

Just standing there as Hilda closes the door on her, tiptoes to the farthest bathroom, and promptly gets sick into the freezing porcelain of a toilet bowl.

Separation anxiety does not pair well with a torn-up heart.

But she’s tired of fighting, of her Sisyphean task in loving her sister (in a way that does not involve lips or teeth or promises of forever)— tired of dying.

She can’t do it anymore.

Something has to change.

It’s not until Zelda almost puts an axe in her face and they kiss on the floor that something does.

Hilda gets her revenge for a third time. It is indeed the charm. 

The satisfaction is sweet, infinitely so, and has Zelda calling her name in whines and benediction.

In control and on top, Hilda dies again.

Is reborn, and nothing hurts.

She is Hildegard Antionette Spellman, and she is in love.

She’s almost sure she’s loved back.

But she keeps most of her clothes on, just in case.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, that was a terrible ending. ;p  
> but we can't make them too happy or perfectly climactic, can we?  
> no, we continue to write a lot of words, and stall.


	5. will we ever end?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, this got into some self indulgent nonsense.   
> and S, if you're out there (and i know you are, because you told me so)   
> DO NOT READ THIS!!!   
> or if you do, don't tell me about it ;p

She wakes to an unknown.

The body she’s inhabiting is warm, a foreign entity of contained exultation.

It cannot be hers, surely.

It is too satisfied.

A slender thigh is rutched between her knees, sticky sweet and flung out in decadence.

Possessive Venus, she is half trapped by her sister’s dozing.

She doesn’t want to escape.

Couldn’t anyway.

Her mind is reeling, dizzying flashes of the night before playing in her mind like a broken cinematic.

Zelda, splayed out before her, eyes wide and mouth gasping.

Roseate nails between legs, inside her sister’s pulse, outside her alabaster neck.

She’d felt her sister soar, that night, so utterly trusting that Hilda could keep her tethered so she wouldn’t fly away.

She’d practically jumped out of her body, crashing back into it with an unholy moan.

All for Hilda.  _Because_  of Hilda.

She was drunk on it.

Still is.

She could stay in the memory forever, bask in whatever outside force allowed such magical madness to occur.

Stay in her sister’s arms an eternity.

But the dawn is breaking, her bladder complaining, and reality will not wait for her to catch up.

She sighs, maneuvers from out her still sleeping sister.

The closing door is silent, and she counts it a blessing.

And then, the suspension lifts.

The day begins.

 

~*~

 

“Auntie Hilda, where’s Aunt Zee? She never misses breakfast.”

She hasn’t even set Sabrina’s plate down before she’s asked this rather inconvenient question.

Her brain racks itself for an answer, comes up empty.

“I’m sure she’s just sleeping in a little late, luv.”

“She doesn’t do that.”

“Can’t she simply be tired? It’s a rather common trait in adults, darling. You’ll find out soon enough.”

She taps the tip of her nose.

It wrinkles in tickled reaction, but there’s no true dissuasion.

“Yeah, but she fell asleep early last night. When I got home, both your lights were out.”

“Oh, well. Erm...”

She looks beseechingly at the so-far silent Ambrose.

He is smirking at her and offers no salvation from this hell of awkward innocence.

“Really,” comes Zelda’s dulcet tones from the hallway. “I can’t change patterns for one day without you all falling to pieces.”

She enters as only she can, dramatically noir.

Her hair cascading over one shoulder like a silken waterfall, her lips are cherry-stained, but Hilda is paying attention—she sees they are still the slightest bit swollen.

Zelda’s collar goes all the way up to her ears.

A Neanderthal sound of satisfaction almost escapes Hilda’s mouth.

She takes a bite of her toast instead.

Newspaper tucked under a silk-clad arm, Zelda gingerly takes her seat.

Everyone notices.

“Are you alright, Aunt Zee? You look like you sat on a fork.”

Ambrose has the audacity to be snickering.

“I am  _perfectly_  alright, Sabrina.”

She opens her newspaper with a distinctly do-not-talk-to-me-anymore flair, sticks her nose in the obituaries.

Hilda places her tea in front of her.

Zelda stiffens, so Hilda stiffens.

Only a half-second, but the air is charged with enough electricity to power the city’s grid for six whole minutes.

Sabrina stares between the two of them.

“Did you two get into a fight?”

They share a look, Hilda is clearly flummoxed and just utterly useless in this moment.

It’s actually quite endearing.

Zelda sighs.

“On the contrary,” her grin is soft on Hilda’s retreating back.

“I think we resolved it.”

And she keeps grinning, because Hilda cannot pull herself together.

Isn’t she lucky, soon she’ll get to bring her apart again.

That soon cannot happen too quickly, or too often.

She eats the rest of Hilda’s abandoned toast, satisfied as it crunches in her mouth, and impatiently waits for the instant they are alone.

 

~*~

 

The fates love to laugh at their expense.

They are not alone for the entire day. Work calls.

No holiday is kind to lonely mortals.

Their gaze stays heated over the frozen cadaver.

Hilda is not so far gone, so lust blind, to allow desecration of the mourned simply because she’s got an itch between her legs two centuries in the making.

She would not put it past Zelda.

The thought makes her shiver, and it is not because of the temperature.

 

~*~

 

Zelda kisses her in the hallway before dinner, lips soft and insistent.

Her knee braced between Hilda’s thighs, hands gently fisted in the fabric around Hilda’s waist.

It is not hurried—languid yet urgent—a joining of mouths in quiet conversation. The unspoken words dancing between tongues kinder than anything she’s ever read.

There is no biting, no clawing frenzy of ardor.

There is only the hallway, sugar sounds, a threshold of tenderness they’ve never walked before.

She grows overwhelmed, and terribly frightened.

Something is about to die, will not be restarted again.

The loathed consistency of virginity is slipping through her greedy fingers.

She’s not sure she won’t miss it.

What if she loses it, gains nothing in return?

What then, will she do?

She sinks her teeth in Zelda’s bottom lip, magics her fingernails long to dig between the dips of her ribcage.

If her maidenhood must die, it will be by her hands.

She is only familiar with brutal death, has never witnessed it slipped into, like slumber.

This time will be no different.

She bites harder.

Zelda’s moan turns to a yelp.

They jerk apart synchronously.

Their shaking fingers meet in conjunction on Zelda’s lower lip.

A bead of blood oozes.

“I’m sorry.” She whispers.

Now, the axe will fall. Surely, it must.

Zelda just kisses her once more.

She ghosts there, gracious and unafraid.

Red iron mixes with Hilda’s copper mouth. Bile tasting suspiciously like tears clogs the back of her throat.

“Better get on to dinner,” Zelda murmurs, taking her wrist, achingly light.

“There will be hell to pay with Sabrina if we’re late a second time.”

She doesn’t let go of Hilda till just outside the kitchen.

Sabrina notices Zelda’s lip, accepts her excuse of biting peaches too harshly.

Hilda stays quiet and won’t meet her eyes.

Dinner is long.

 

~*~

 

When they retire to bed, she tries again.

Only uses her teeth to scrape the underside of Zelda’s jaw.

She does not bite at all.

Her hands roam, fingernails trimmed again, questing for el dorado along the planes of Zelda’s gilded body.

Zelda is back to gasping, lush and delicious, shies away with an apologetic sigh.

She is still too sore, too sensitive to take her pleasure tonight.

And it is Hilda’s long overdue turn.

Hilda nods jerkily, deep breaths in, as Zelda kisses her forehead.

With herculean effort, she stays still.

She will be relaxed.

She will be  _enjoyed_.

Genuinely reacts as Zelda palms over her nightgown, tits rising, mouth parted and mind numb.

Sensation deafens the fear, dulls everything but Zelda’s split lips on her neck, soft fingers content to touch in beneficent admiration.

She can’t help how she stiffens as Zelda travels under her cotton shift.

Grits her teeth, tells her to continue.

The softness is alien.

Zelda treats her preciously.

There’s not so much a spider’s touch near the apex on her thighs but she halts, mind flung out of body, tremoring limbs all that remains.

Apnea, asphyxiation, absence.

Holding breath, she steels for intrusion.

There is nothing but silent waiting.

She cracks an eye open.

Zelda is hovering over her, flaxen curls dangling down, not touching her.

Nothing is touching her.

“Don’t stop.” She chokes out.

Zelda looks at her in concern.

Distraught.

Helpless.

“Don’t stop.”

Water tracts the corners of her eyes, travels down into her hair, pools uncomfortable and greasy in the crease of her neck like oiling puddles.

“Please.”

Her mouth opens, a bubble of emotion and spit pops as her forehead crumbles.

“Just do it already.”

Zelda descends.

Not on top of her.

She falls to the side, eyes anxious and confused, palms against Hilda’s damp cheeks, thumbs brushing away witches’ salt.

The loving is what breaks her.

She is so afraid of calm.

“I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

Even she doesn’t know what that means.

Zelda tucks her into the crook of her open body, aligned and soothing.

Suddenly she’s four again, just learning the world is cruel enough to leave scrapes on your knees if you trip, and Zelda holds her like she did back then.

She is cherished in arms stronger than her own, a buoy in the storm raging within, the center point of existence.

She falls asleep with Zelda’s shoulder strap clenched in one fist.

Zelda does not let her go.

 

~*~

 

This time, the body she wakes up in is more familiar.

It is lonely, and disappointed.

Zelda is not there.

But Hilda’s favorite dressing gown is laid out at the foot of the bed, the gaudy pink robe freshly pressed.

It’s still warm, and smells like Zelda’s perfume.

She puts it on, heads downstairs.

No one’s in sight. Not Sabrina, nor Ambrose, not even Vinegar Tom.

Fleetingly, she wonders if Zelda took them all and ran off.

Wouldn’t make a lick of sense, but neither does the fact Hilda hyperventilated underneath her sister just a few hours ago, even though it was everything she’d ever wanted.

She puts the kettle on, sends her senses throughout the house to see if anyone’s there.

As soon as her magic brushes up against Zelda’s, she drops it, shame flooding her cheeks.

She is a world-class ninny, and it seems only her sister is the grand audience to her idiocy.

She wishes Ambrose was still tethered to the Spellman grounds.

Not really.

She doesn’t begrudge him even a smidgeon of his newfound freedom.

She just doesn’t know how to face Zelda again.

Not alone, anyhow.

Humiliation is the smallest emotion she’s suffering from right now.

The bigger ones threaten to chew on her from the inside out.

“Hilda, come here a moment.” Zelda’s voice echoes from the parlor.

She gulps, grabs her tea as a shield, and heads in.

“Yes, sister?”

Zelda’s leaned over the coffee table, a puzzle laid out before her.

She doesn’t look up.

“Help me with this.”

She ducks her chin, sits across from her, and scans the origin box picture.

“... This is just sky and a bit of cloud, Zelds.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m really not.”

“There’s a bird.”

Hilda squints.

Older sister, ever helpful, points to the blob of white.

Could be a seagull.

She suspects it’s another cloud.

She grabs a corner piece and sets to work.

She does not notice her sister watching her, she is too busy forming the base work of this framed sky.

Tongue poked out the corner of her mouth, tension drains from her body like a very long, molasses sigh.

The sisters work together, wordlessly sensing the other’s needs, handing pieces over without question.

She smells first, the scent of smoke, the foreign flavor. Turns, watches smoke billow from the painted mouth, tobacco tinged with lemongrass.

“New cigarette, sister? Unlike you.”

“Felt like something different... calming.”

Apprehension tickles Hilda’s spine with icy fingers.

“Hence the puzzle?”

Just a nod in answer.

Zelda goes back to it. Hilda follows.

A moment of silence, then—

“Wh—why?”

“Because, I’m wondering.”

Pause.

“ _Worried_.”

Hilda needs a repeat.

“Sorry, what?”

“I,” She pushes down a piece of blue. “Am worried.”

She looks straight into Hilda’s eyes.

Fathomless.

Hilda swallows very hard.

“I’m worried,” gray settles into place.

“Because my sister,” corner piece this time.

“Would let me  _hurt_  her,” the hand fumbles.

“In the name of pleasure,” she pushes the cardboard down hard. 

“Because she thinks I can’t be—“ the blue won’t fit.

“Can’t be kind.”

She tosses it to the side, brings a hand to her face.

“I’m worried she’s right.”

Hilda is quiet for a long moment.

Picks up the piece, settles it in a different place. One last one.

They’ve got the outline now.

“That’s not why.”

Zelda inhales sharply, she feels it in her own ribs.

They’re both drowning, aren’t they?

Full breath of her own, she goes deeper.

“Zelda, you are my every fantasy. And in them, you are always kind.”

Different throats, same hitching.

She continues.

“In reality, it’s the same. You were—are—so gentle with me. It’s terrifying.”

She shrugs, as if the reason is plain.

“Fantasy is the only thing I can control. Mix it with reality... I won’t have anything left that’s mine.”

With no real feeling, she goes back to fixing the broken sky.

There’s no response and everything is unfinished.

“I thought it would be better,” she wets her lips. “Kill the dream, end the waste of time, yeah? They say it hurts less with practice.”

She shakes her head, as if to dispel the seriousness.

“It’s silly. Forget I ever said anything.”

Zelda’s hand rests on hers.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“ _No_.”

It is emphatic, colored by longing.

Zelda worries her bottom lip between her teeth. Hilda wants to do it for her.

The bite wound splits open.

She retreats inward.

“What do you want to do?”

Cry, probably.

She’s not inclined to believe the universe has a grudge big enough to make people as mistakes, but it must have been particularly surly to have created her specific type of neuroses.

“Let’s just finish this puzzle... and talk.”

 

~*~

 

“I could watch you. Finishing the  _puzzle_  on your own.”

“I don’t think I much like that euphemism.”

 

“Mutual watching then.”

“I don’t perform well under pressure.”

 

“Phone sex? It’s hands-free.”

“Don’t be crude.”

“Says the one who choked me less than a week ago.”

“Zelda!”

 

“I just want to taste you.”

“Now you’ve gone and done it, I’m really blushing and it’s quite horrid.”

“It’s actually quite fetching.”

 

“I won’t be any good, the first time, you know.”

“Sister mine, that’s all you’ve ever been.”

 

~*~

 

Three nights and three days pass.

They alternate rooms to avoid suspicion.

Their young charges are either too unobservant or too smart to mention anything.

They kiss often, and softly.

Hands above clothes, legs between legs.

Zelda’s stopped being sore in spirit and body.

She won’t let Hilda inside her again, says she won’t be so selfish as to cum when her sister can’t.

Hilda thinks that’s a little silly.

She recognizes the hypocrisy, thus says nothing of it.

Something is different this night, she can feel it on the wind.

Can smell it from Zelda’s cigarette holder.

Lemongrass.

Anticipation.

She isn’t nervous when she closes her bedroom, let’s out a squeak as she turns to the bed.

Zelda’s reclining against the headboard, legs open.

She pats the empty space between them with one hand. She has a book in the other.

Hilda is nervous now.

Still, she stumbles over to the bed (she’d made sure for  _this_  one, she wouldn’t need to hop into it. Zelda is still disappointed about that) _._

Once she’d settled, Zelda pulls her closer, back flush against her chest.

She can feel taut nipples under silk.

She shudders.

“This okay?” Zelda mumbles, lips peppering affection across the backs of her shoulders.

“Yes.” She hears how breathy her voice is. Doesn’t care enough.

“I had an idea I thought we might try, if you’re up for it.”

“Wha—what is it?”

And then it is Zelda’s turn to blush, as she puts the book within Hilda’s line of vision.

“The Maidens of Wilter’s Shire?”

Hilda’s tone incredulous.

“I thought I might read it to you.”

“I see.”

She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t a bit turned on.

Zelda’s mouth is open and wet, pressed where her shoulder meets neck, teeth on skin, just resting bare.

“You’ve got control tonight, little heart. Guide my hands, or use your own, but  _please_ ,”

Lust shoots through her very core.

“I just want you to feel good. With me here.”

She turns, and Zelda’s eyes are open and scared.

She kisses her.

Zelda kisses back with fervor but doesn’t touch.

A promise has been made.

Hilda scoots away, stands up.

Zelda makes a noise, but quickly pauses because Hilda is shimmying out of her night gown.

Hesitates.

Knickers off too.

Then there’s nothing left to hide behind.

The sound that escapes Zelda’s mouth is sheer avidity.

Tumultuous, titanic desire.

Hilda is back between her legs in an instant, pressed tight and shaking against her silk.

Tentatively, Zelda wraps an arm around her waist.

She sighs deeper into her warm body.

“Okay?”

“Very much so.”

“If it’s too much, tell me.”

Silence.

“Hilda.”

“I will.”

“Good.”

Hilda is very glad they aren’t facing each other, because the minute Zelda starts reading, her face goes beet-red and she’s already started to drip.

“‘ _You mean too much to me_ ,’” Zelda’s voice rings out.

Hilda nearly wishes the words were her own.

No.

One fantasy at a time.

“‘ _Little Rose, I’d give you every star in the night sky_.’”

She’s not sure how Zelda knows this is her favorite part, but it  _does_   _things_  to her.

Shyly, she takes Zelda’s right hand, brings it to the peak of her breast.

Watches as the lilac-varnished nails circle the pinkness there, padding over the center ever so gently.

She arches to it.

“‘ _I don’t need stars or the night sky_ ,’ Rose said. ‘ _We are not so eternal as to own them. I just need this, your hand in mine._ ’”

Hilda clutches Zelda’s other hand in hers.

The book suspends itself midair, pages turning with Zelda’s magic.

“‘ _Give me your heart on loan, your name adorning my lips, let us live like we own one another_.’”

Zelda kisses just under her ear, her head falls back against her sister’s shoulder.

“‘ _Can’t you see, my love, my Wren. You will be enough for me. No one exists so well together but us_.’”

Intertwined, both their right hands slide down the twitching abdomen, caress the sun-kissed thighs, brush knuckles over the golden curls.

Simultaneously, they gasp at the wetness there.

“‘ _There was no one made for me but you. I was the snake consuming myself. I could eat the dawn, the dusk. Nothing satisfies my essence like you_.’”

Hilda takes Zelda’s wrist, guides her fingers under her sex. Cupped digits scoop up the slick.

She is entranced, but must break the spell to whimper, “Please.”

Two fingers swipe up her center, she jerks hard and the hand on her breast wraps around her ribs instead, anchoring her.

The fingers circle her clit. 

Her throat kissed zealously as she cries out. 

“‘ _Then come with me, my Rose, and know this: in all the worlds and all the loves, we are the only creations that matter. There will never be atoms again formed in this paradigm of perfect alignment. We are the utopia that goes right_.’” 

She pushes the fingers inside, gasps at the fullness. 

Should have started with one, is too impatient.

She squirms against Zelda, whines because it’s too much and not nearly enough.

Zelda is holding her and shushing her and helping her chase completion, they’re as close to melded as two bodies can be. 

She rolls her hips once, twice, more.

Again, and again, pulling her sister in deeper.

She’s starting to feel it, the building, the blinding, the only type of resurrection she likes, when she feels Zelda shift. 

Eyes wide, lips parted, Hilda realizes she is being worshiped.

Zelda kisses her cheeks, her chin, her lips twice for good measure, and the next words are hers, and hers alone. 

“You are the reality I choose, Hilda, forever and ever. We are not mortals, we can promise more. Love, my eternity is all yours.”

And then she is coming. 

Stars behind the eyes, inside the mind, around her sister’s fingers. 

A galaxy in genesis.

She flares, stutters, and calls her sister’s name. 

The macrocosm shifts. 

 

~*~

 

“Stop licking your fingers.”

“I deserve it. I read smut for you.”

“You’re obscene.”

“And you’re delicious.”

“ _Zelds_.”

 

“ _Well_.”

“Well what?”

“I’m going to pinch you.”

“Oi, I’m  _sensitive_  there right this minute.”

“How was it then?”

“I can’t feel my legs.”

“And didn’t I say so.”

“Hush now and let me glow in it.”

 

“Zelda?”

“Yes, little goose?”

“You’ve got my eternity too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much to everyone who's read this series and left such lovely comments!  
> you're all in my heart, and im so very glad for you   
> thank you, and thank you   
> and thank you some more  
> <3


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